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The Khronos Group announced the launch of a new initiative to create an open, platform-independent, royalty-free standard which will allow access to variety of advanced input devices including depth cameras, motion-tracking sensors, touch-screens and haptic devices.

In a release Neil Trevett, president of Khronos and vice president of Mobile Content at NVIDIA (News - Alert) said, “Input devices now range from simple keyboards, through 9-axis motion positional sensors, to depth ranging cameras with sophisticated image processing. A robust input API is essential to drive the market adoption of advanced sensors by enabling input fusion innovation under a common API that provides portability to application developers.”

“This initiative will also enable advanced applications such as augmented reality that need to process and synchronize multiple sensors for a truly seamless end-user experience,” Trevett added.

In its endeavor to cater to the needs of several members, Khronos has created a ‘StreamInput’ working group that will be chaired initially by TransGaming Inc. This royalty-free standard will be developed under the Khronos development process and it will be available for its first public release within 12 months, said officials.

It is expected that the Khronos StreamInput working group will initiate industry consensus to create a cross-platform API for offering applications with both high-level semantic input as well as low-level device management capabilities. This will enable innovations by sensor and device manufacturers besides also simplifying portable application development.

It was revealed that the new API will support a general-purpose framework for handling both new generation sensors and traditional input devices such as keyboards, mice, track pads and joysticks. The API will also use Khronos’ extension mechanisms to enable the addition of new types of input devices.

The API will support system-wide sensor synchronization for advanced multi-sensor applications such as augmented reality also.

According to Eric Krzeslo, chief strategy officer at Softkinetic that specializes in 3D camera hardware and 3D gesture recognition software, natural and intuitive human-machine interfaces, using 3D depth sensing and gesture recognition technologies, are featured widely by developers and customers in consumer electronics and professional markets.

To serve this purpose Khronos’ initiative to standardize common APIs across the natural interface continuum and traditional interfaces will provide developers a solid foundation for building re-usable applications, Krzeslo noted.

Shamila Janakiraman is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Shamila’s articles, please visit her columnist page.